DEA petition delivered

Chuck Rosenberg was supposed to be a different kind of Drug Enforcement Agency leader, someone who could serve as acting administrator for the remainder of President Barack Obama’s time in office without rocking the boat like his embattled predecessor.

Instead, Rosenberg is under siege from activists and lawmakers after calling the use of raw marijuana to treat medical conditions “a joke” earlier this month, and he’s facing a campaign by reformers unseen even by the famously anti-reform Michele Leonhart, who stepped down in May after a sex party scandal.

And on Friday, a group of nearly two dozen patients, caregivers and policy advocates visited the DEA’s headquarters in northern Virginia to present boxes stuffed with printouts of an online petition calling for Rosenberg’s ouster. The petition has been signed by more than 100,000 people and was spearheaded by Marijuana Majority leader Tom Angell.

Again, I reiterate, petitions are generally worthless. But what Tom has done here is really quite excellent. He started a petition, and, because he keeps really good relationships with a variety of media folks, he gets articles written about there being a petition, which gets more people to sign it. And because he has also developed relationships with political leaders, they write their own letters, which generates more press. Then he gets the press to cover the deliverance of the petitions, along with sick people who signed them.

And, because I’m on Tom’s press list, I get regular updates from him on the status of the petition, which makes me more likely to write about it. Good organization. Good activism.

Will Rosenberg be fired? Of course not. But that’s not the important thing – what we’ve got is major news outlets treating the DEA as under siege, putting them on the defensive, and giving medical marijuana patients sympathy for being treated “as a joke” by the bad government bureaucrats.

17 comments to DEA petition delivered

I’m not so sure petitions are ineffective. The speed with which this one has gathered 100,000 signatures suggests that Washington pols will have to start paying attention to voters or get thrown out.
“The petition, which was started only two weeks ago, has more than doubled the number of signatures on an earlier petition that helped prompt the ouster of Rosenberg’s predecessor, former DEA head Michele Leonhart”.

this petition IS effective. Tom Angell is an effective guy. I laugh when I think “shit, I watched him grow up” (which many here have, Tom has been at this for nearly 2 decades if memory serves me correctly).

Cannabis in my opinion should never be a controlled substance, take New Zealand for example, we have a Autism Advocacy group that has tried to make Cannabis as a viable treatment for Autism as a taboo subject, I find this kind of attitude as highly disappointing, many parents who have children with Autism and other Autism sufferers do not agree with Cannabis as a treatment for Autism being a taboo subject

Good example of a Autism sufferer who has normalized from Cannabis, in New Zealand these kind of subjects which I tend to discuss is taken as taboo by many Autism Advocacy Organizations and some of the Autism sufferers are not happy about it:

If a German 20-year-old, let’s call him Maximillian S., operating from his mom’s apartment, can achieve so much in so little time, with such limited resources, the DEA and other law enforcement must question what this situation says about their own resources and abilities when it comes to achieving anything like stopping access to illicit drugs.

Removing DEA bosses is uplifting and sends a good message. Its also an exercise in futility as long as the Justice Department and the DEA are tasked with running an agency dedicated to the prohibition of drugs and the prosecution of those individuals who ignore that prohibition.

That is called “Drug War”.

Can we petition to disband the DEA? Does the DEA or the Justice Department care about the endocannabinoid system?

I venture to say they know nothing about it and don’t really care. Schedule one exists to prohibit not control. I say petition to get rid of schedule one or the DEA, or both. Pinching heads off of the DEA may be fun, but we need to do more than that to end the war on drugs.